UNSW-IoTSAT: A hybrid testbed-derived dataset for enabling cybersecurity research in the smart satellite domain

Satellite communications are rapidly evolving into the Internet of Things (IoT) era, driven by the rise of CubeSats and lightweight platforms that enable faster deployment cycles, reduced launch costs, and the integration of diverse, often unregulated payloads. As these smart satellite systems become increasingly interconnected, their cybersecurity threat landscape expands, while existing defensive controls remain ill-suited to the unique constraints of satellites, including limited power, bandwidth, and computational resources. This paper introduces UNSW-IoTSAT , a first-of-its-kind dataset designed specifically for cybersecurity research in IoT-based satellite communication systems. The dataset captures realistic satellite telemetry streams within a hybrid, cyber-physical satellite environment, combined with a diverse range of satellite-oriented cyber attacks, generated using a controlled testbed that implements Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) protocol standards. UNSW-IoTSAT consists of over 404,000 labelled records encompassing both normal operations and attack scenarios. Unlike existing datasets that focus on terrestrial traffic or limited satellite telemetry, UNSW-IoTSAT uniquely integrates IoT sensor data, CCSDS-compliant communication, RF-layer impairments, and realistic cyber-attack modelling. This addresses the critical gap in publicly available satellite cybersecurity datasets and provides a reproducible benchmark for developing anomaly detection algorithms, intrusion detection systems, and vulnerability assessment techniques tailored to the constraints of smart satellite networks.